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Did you read the article in the New York Times Magazine on 1/31/10 about "Solastalgia," a term for " the pain experienced where there is recognition that the place where one resides and that one loves is under immediate assault... a form of homesickness one gets when one is still at 'home.'"?
It's a really interesting article,--read it if you have time--and it made me think about the potential analogue between the psyches of people whose home has been taken away or degraded and the psyches of adoptees and birthparents.
As a person to whom home landscape matters immensely, and as an adoptee, it makes a lot of sense to me.
But what about you?
1 comment:
Thanks for posting that.
I contemplate topophilia and philopatry every day and the term solastalgia is something I regularly feel as a 4th generation Californian. Sprawl is what motivates my local sense of it. When I see others suffering in solastalgic grief it moves me quickly to tears of anger and empathetic frustration.
In contrast one of my favorite words about the environment that brings me joy whenever I think about is "petrichor" was ironically also coined in the same area of Perth as solastalgia.
I've been reading an older book called Geography and National Identity, and have a sense that solastalgia can create grief and dysfunction of group and personal identity on a national scale when the landscape is assaulted.
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